Chapter 10
Capture the Magic with Storyboards
Layer upon layer, we create a patchwork of sketches and words that color the original idea. Funny, fantastic, diverting, enhancing, persuasive, serious or not, our visualized thoughts begin to chisel away and uncover the diamond in the rough.68
Disney Imagineers
Like many ingenious concepts, storyboarding takes a simple technique—visual display—and uses it in a unique way to help companies solve complex business problems. It is a structured exercise designed to capture the thoughts and ideas from a group of participants. Their thoughts and ideas are put on cards and then displayed on a board or a wall. The result, an “idea landscape,” is more organized than the output from brainstorming, yet it retains the flexibility that project teams need as they work their way through the various stages of problem solving and idea generation.
Walt Disney originally conceived the idea that eventually became known as storyboarding as a way to keep track of the thousands of drawings necessary to achieve full animation of cartoon features. By having his artists pin their drawings in sequential order on the studio wall, Disney could quickly see which parts of a project were or were not completed.
From its genesis in animation, the technique has spread to many other areas. Advertising agencies now use storyboarding to sketch out commercials before they shoot them. Scenes from feature movies are often storyboarded for the next day’s camera work. Editors and art directors utilize storyboards as a tool in producing picture books. It allows them to visualize what the final page will look like and to make sure that one page leads logically to the next.
But storyboarding is not limited to artistic endeavors. We suggest to companies that storyboarding is an effective method to conceptualize their mission statements, to develop best practices for manufacturing control systems, and to produce technical plans for improvements. Posted ideas or suggestions become the first step in the analysis of barriers, the investigation of their root causes, and the creation of team solutions. Any process can be mapped out in this way.
Storyboarding is a creative and efficient method for generating solutions to complex problems—those that can sometimes feel overwhelming—because it breaks situations into smaller, more manageable parts and focuses group attention on specific aspects of a problem. When ideas and suggestions are displayed on a wall where they can be read by all and moved about as storyboarding participants see fit, the confusion that can stymie breakthrough ideas is dissipated.
No other planning technique offers the flexibility of storyboarding. In this chapter, we explain exactly how storyboarding works, and we look at a number of examples of the technique in action. As you read how companies in various settings are successfully using it to solve a range of problems, think about putting the technique to work for your organization.
The Birth of a Technique
When Walt Disney came up with the forerunner to the storyboarding technique in 1928, cartoon animation bore faint resemblance to the complex web of movement and color we know today. Full animation of cartoon features was still just a dream, but it was one Disney was striving to realize. To that end, he produced thousands more drawings than state-of-the-art animation required at that time.
The finished drawings were arranged in piles according to a predetermined narrative sequence. Then the cameraperson would photograph them, and the staff could watch them in a screening room. But with the prodigious output of drawings, it didn’t take long before piles were stacked up in the studio. To bring some sense of order and to make it easier to follow a film’s developing story line, Disney instructed his artists to display their drawings on a large piece of fiberboard that measured about 4 feet by 8 feet.
Not just finished drawings, but early rough sketches were pinned on the board. If there were problems with the story line or if a character wasn’t taking shape as Disney wanted, changes could be made before the expensive work of animation was begun. The storyboard made it possible for Disney to experiment, to move drawings around, to change direction, to insert something he thought was missing, or to discard a sequence that wasn’t working. And he could do all this before the animator had spent countless hours painstakingly putting in the final details.
Decades later, in the 1960s, the display technique was picked up by Disney’s employee development program when the staff recognized its value for generating solutions to problems and enhancing communications in other areas. The refined storyboard concept has since been adapted to a variety of problem-solving situations in which the introduction of the visual element makes interconnections more readily apparent. As the participants pin cards to the wall, the team begins to develop various alternatives to solving the problem at hand.
Why doesn’t a flip chart on an easel, a method often used in brainstorming sessions, work as well as a storyboard? On a flip chart, participants can see only one step at a time and therefore fail to get an overall picture. Moreover, flip charts can quickly become virtually unreadable as new ideas are inserted, old ideas are scratched out or moved around, and large arrows are left pointing nowhere. In addition, the lack of anonymity in brainstorming—participants must voice their ideas publicly—contributes a certain unease that discourages contributions. Our experience with both storyboarding and brainstorming allows us to make concrete comparisons in this regard: Whereas a 60-minute brainstorming session with 14 participants produces, on average, 42 utterances (questions, ideas, or comments), a storyboard session of the same size and duration typically produces anywhere from 150 to 300 utterances! Our studies have shown that in a typical 14-person brainstorming session, 5 participants produce 80 percent of the utterances, 5 participants produce 20 percent of the utterances, and the remaining 4 participants are observers of the meeting. In a storyboard session, all members of the group are active participants.
Anyone who has participated in the traditional, inefficient problem-solving meeting knows the drudgery of endless discussion, time-wasting repetitions, and lengthy explanations. Since only one person can talk at a time, most people’s minds wander from the topic being discussed to the job waiting for them back at their desks. And invariably, a single participant tends to dominate the discussion. When the meeting finally drones to a close, it is virtually impossible to remember much of what was said.
Storyboarding, however, works to reverse this outcome. It is a fully participatory activity that places the entire sequence of a project, a company policy, or plan of action clearly in everyone’s line of sight.
Overcoming Skepticism
We generally acquaint clients with the concept of storyboarding early in our association. Even though we emphasize its enormous value, acceptance is not a foregone conclusion. The idea of congregating around a space decorated with rows of cards on the wall seems totally outlandish to people who have never witnessed a storyboarding session.
A utility that we worked with in Indianapolis, for example, had spent almost two years trying to devise a plan for changing their culture. After untold hours of management meetings, brainstorming, and arguing, the executive team still couldn’t agree on a plan. When we arrived with a stack of cards and dozens of markers, the group listened politely as we explained storyboarding, but they were clearly dubious about the whole approach. Nevertheless, they agreed to give it a try.
The group appeared far from convinced at the outset of our session that tacking cards on a wall would do anything to solve those problems that had baffled them for two years. We began by asking them for their ideas for potential solutions, which they wrote out and we put up on the board. As the cards were moved around and new ideas added, a structure for their implementation plans gradually developed.
The storyboarding process is like building a house; it entails a logical progression. Just as a house begins with the architect’s conceptual rendering and then moves through the various stages—foundation, subflooring, walls, and roof—so, too, the storyboard process starts with the “concept,” or the problem to be solved, and moves along in a creative interplay of ideas and suggestions until the desired solution has taken shape.
And that is exactly what happened in the session with the utility after only two hours of storyboarding. The once-skeptical executives were astounded. One of them admitted to us afterwards that the group initially thought storyboarding was, in his words, “a real Mickey Mouse technique.” They couldn’t imagine that it could be of benefit in their situation. But more progress was made in two hours of storyboarding than the group had made in the previous two years of endless meetings and unproductive wrangling. Everyone agreed that the storyboarding technique had crystallized the overall concept of what management wanted to achieve, clarified the necessary action steps, and defined the progression of tasks.
Many people wonder how something so simple can possibly work to unravel complex questions. After all, a five-year-old can be taught to put cards up on the wall. Yet to paraphrase a line of poetry, simplicity is elegance, and it usually takes just one session to convince people of the richness of the storyboarding technique. The power it has to engage and stimulate people and to unleash their productivity is remarkable.
We believe that the high level of participation demanded by storyboarding is one reason that it works so well. Instead of the typical meeting situation in which the troops are forced to endure endless and often garbled rhetoric, in a storyboard situation the facilitator engages all people in a focused discussion.
This approach also heightens the concentration of individual group members as they become immersed in the problem at hand. Participants begin to embellish and expand on one another’s ideas, unlike what often happens in brainstorming, when rather than adding to the proposed idea, half the people in the group are busy marshaling their thoughts to rebut it. “That’s not going to work,” they think, or “My department will never buy that.”
In addition, the initial anonymity (people don’t have to sign their names to their idea cards) encourages free expression and critical thinking. The value of anonymity was brought home to us in a focus group we conducted for Illinois Power. That group, composed of folks from the community, was set up to help the Illinois Power economic development team become more effective.
Originally scheduled to run from 8 a.m. until noon, the session was conducted just like a conventional focus group, with people brainstorming and putting things on flip charts around the room. When we realized after two hours that no new ideas were emerging, we assumed that everyone had said everything they wanted to say. To our surprise, however, several of the team members pressed us to try the storyboarding technique that we had previously described to them. So instead of ending the meeting early, we spent the remaining two hours doing a storyboard process. The result: at least three significant new ideas emerged concerning ways in which the development team could better serve the community.
As it turned out, some of the focus group participants had been reluctant to verbalize their ideas in front of the group. In our experience, that is often the case. Many people are simply frightened by the thought of speaking their minds in public. But stimulated by the discussion and given the chance to express themselves anonymously, they too can provide valuable input.
Storyboarding, then, can be an inestimable tool for getting to the heart of customer problems, and innovative response to customer problems is the stuff of business legend.
Solving the Communications Dilemma
Intracompany communication is a hot topic these days. People fret about it in management meetings; employees complain about it around the water cooler; and everyone agrees on the need for more and better dialogue. But several questions remain: Is anyone really communicating? How many organizations have a formal plan to facilitate better communication?
One of our clients, Whirlpool, understands better than most the importance of formalizing communications. At its Lavergne, Tennessee, manufacturing plant, the company has developed an entire center devoted solely to increasing the level of interaction between management and production employees. The center, which is actually located on the manufacturing floor, contains several museum-quality display booths that disseminate division and union news, highlight corporate initiatives, and answer employee questions using storyboarding techniques. In addition, people on the plant floor have direct access to a communications manager.
More important, the center is part of a much broader communications plan that encourages face-to-face interaction between management and production people, proposes electronic communication technology, oversees written communication, and holds managers accountable for communications in their performance process.
A formal plan is important because not everyone responds to the various forms of communication in the same way. Some people like it written; some want information delivered face-to-face; and some don’t care about the method, but they do care about the quality and the frequency. Obviously, meeting the needs of a diverse work group requires experimentation with various options—quarterly town hall–type meetings perhaps, or skip-level meetings that allow top management to hear from people once or twice removed from the usual information chain, or implementation of a 360-degree feedback approach. The point is that management can’t depend on a haphazard communication system. It must consider the various styles and needs of its work group audience and then devise a formal plan for delivering information.
Storyboarding is an ideal way to share ideas and concepts, throwing them into the public arena for discussion and tapping a team’s collective creativity to figure out where and how an idea might work in any given function or department within a company. The technique helps break through interdepartmental barriers because it promotes face-to-face communication and a lively give-and-take among diverse personalities focused on a common goal.
Working with various client teams, we have repeatedly noticed that storyboarding enhances a team’s cohesiveness. The interplay of meaningful communication has a way of binding people together. This is especially true of cross-functional teams, like those we set up at Whirlpool and at Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Members of a cross-functional team are often near strangers to one another. That’s because they work in different departments and receive different training; even their outlook is different. But once team members participate in a storyboarding session together, employees from manufacturing or accounting or purchasing or any other department often find that they are not as far apart as they once thought. To solidify a team, we suggest that the group storyboard. That way, any ideas that come out of the team belong to the group, not to individuals.
The bonding element inherent in storyboarding worked to particularly good effect with a Whirlpool global team. The members of the team spoke several different languages and came from wildly different backgrounds—not just different job descriptions, but different countries, continents, and political situations. For example, among them was an engineer who had never been outside communist China before finding himself set down in the midwestern United States. How could such diversity be melded into one high-functioning group of men and women? Storyboards helped us overcome the hurdles.
We storyboarded national character traits and had team members decide which traits they liked and which they disliked. As it turned out, there was a high level of agreement on what people liked as well as what they didn’t like. The best learning of all, they said, was the discovery that they all disliked “arrogance” in others! The storyboarding experiment helped to clarify the team concept for everyone. And that was no small accomplishment considering that many of the participants came from countries in which orders come from above and are followed without question. In such situations, the team concept is totally alien to the culture.
Storyboarding, then, can help a company improve communication and planning at all levels. What’s more, establishing storyboarding as an integral part of planning brings clarity to an organization’s internal workings.
At Illinois Power, for example, we suggested using storyboarding to help ease the transition to a new culture emphasizing teams. The plan to introduce teams and to increase the participation of the workforce at all levels amounted to radical and far-reaching change for the traditionally structured utility. Top management recognized that such an organizational metamorphosis would require a thorough re-education program. Employees would have to reassess their views of the company as a whole as well as their individual roles within it. But determining how an implementation should be constructed was no easy task.
Storyboarding uncovered potential barriers to the transition, which could then be addressed in the plan. Among the items dealt with in the session were management and employee resistance, closed lines of communication, rigid and hierarchical bureaucracy, and outdated facilities. This particular storyboard ended up serving as the foundation for Illinois Power’s implementation plan for the new team culture.
Getting Started with Storyboarding
Supplies
A meeting room with plenty of blank wall space
An unbiased facilitator
Pin boards and pins or drafting tape
At least ten 4 × 6 index cards for every participant
Water-soluble felt-tip markers in blue, black, and red
Several different colored press-on three-quarter-inch dots
Procedure
Facilitator asks leading questions, and group agrees on “topic card.” (See Figure 10-1.)
Participants record their thoughts regarding the topic on index cards.
A facilitator gathers the “detail” cards, discusses each card with group, and clusters them by topic.
Once three to four detail cards are in a cluster, group determines “header card” that describes the cluster. Header card is then printed in red.
Once all cards are discussed and headers created, facilitator determines the number of “priority dots” to be given to each participant. Priority dots identify most significant headers and most significant detail cards.
Storyboard is either left on the wall for group reference or typed and distributed to all members.
Figure 10-1. Storyboard example
Guidelines
Facilitator prepares leading questions beforehand.
Only one idea per card.
The more ideas the better.
No criticism of any idea.
Criteria for Good Questions
Induce curiosity.
Encourage positive thinking.
Strive for consensus.
Prevent termination of discussion.
Facilitator’s Role
Create pleasant, informal atmosphere.
Lead discussion to mobilize group’s creative energy and resolve conflicts.
Question conclusions or answers in noncompetitive, nonhierarchical way.
Provide positive feedback.
Keep the process moving.
Stimulate group to work on its own.
Things to Keep in Mind during Session
What has been achieved so far?
Where do we stand?
What still needs to be done?
Storyboarding: The Process
In our work with organizations, we have seen every imaginable variety of storyboard technique, some using nothing more complicated than a bunch of index cards and a fistful of markers, others utilizing charts, pictures, drawings, or computer-generated printouts, and some dependent on information technology networks.
While electronic storyboarding is fine for collecting ideas and even for some degree of brainstorming, it cannot generate the creative energy that is sparked by in-person storyboard sessions. In these sessions, you are likely to see people jumping up from their chairs to point at various pieces of the puzzle. Some may even move a card from one place on the storyboard to another in order to prove that a particular idea fits better elsewhere. The increase in spontaneity and enthusiastic communication moves the meeting along at a fast pace. And because everyone is working from the same road map, it’s easier to build consensus.
From a procedural standpoint, storyboarding evolves in a logical progression as mentioned above. First, the team identifies the topic to be defined or the problem to be solved, and this is written on a card and posted at the top of the storyboard. Then it establishes a “purpose,” meaning the reasons for pursuing the topic. The facilitator allows the participants time to sit and answer the question or problem, jotting down their thoughts, one idea per card. The facilitator then collects the cards as participants continue to write more thoughts and may choose to sort the cards moving duplications to the back of the stack. When the group has completed the writing exercise, the facilitator reads each card aloud, invites discussion, and asks the participants to suggest how the cards might be clustered or positioned on the wall. As the discussion proceeds, all miscellaneous ideas that don’t seem to fit anywhere else are held onto and placed in one section of the board. Nothing is discarded, no matter how useless it might seem, because you never know when the idea offered at 10 a.m. will prove to be the perfect piece for solving the puzzle at 2 p.m.
There are four main types of storyboards:
1. The idea board, which is used to develop a concept.
2. The planning board, which is an outline of the steps required to reach the desired result.
3. The organization board, which determines who will be responsible for what.
4. The communications board (highly visible as the process or project is carried out), which allows a person or group to organize and communicate daily activities to those who need to know.
Regardless of what storyboarding is being used for, one thing remains constant—its role in nurturing creative and critical thinking.
When it comes to the mechanics of storyboarding, people often ask the practical question, “How much space do we need to adequately storyboard?” There is no cut-and-dried answer because it depends on how many people will be present at a meeting. Two people can storyboard very satisfactorily in a small office for the purpose of visualizing their ideas or mapping out potential solutions to a problem. In our experience, groups of more than 25 often suffer from the old mindset of the typical classroom where the teacher speaks and the students are silent. This type of rigor mortis kills the intended participation of storyboarding.
Every storyboarding session needs a facilitator, whose job it is to bring everyone into the discussion with stimulating questions. The facilitator should, as much as possible, let the participants run the meeting while still maintaining control and not letting the discussion get out of hand.
Criticism should be avoided, no matter how off-the-wall the suggestions might seem. An informal atmosphere and encouraging words will produce the greatest number of ideas. To that end, the facilitator strives to promote positive thinking and to create a consensus, although he or she must be careful not to terminate a discussion. Ideas must flow freely to their logical conclusions.
An American architect once mused that there are very few inferior people in the world, but lots of inferior environments. “Try to enrich your environment,” he advised.69 Storyboarding is a tool that can enrich the environment of any organization, no matter the specific needs. Storyboarding can be adapted to fit so that anyone can capture the magic.
Having examined planning and problem solving, we turn our attention in the next chapter to the third element of successful execution of The Disney Way. As Walt knew so well, grand ideas are nothing without proper emphasis on the details.
Questions to Ask
Do you formalize communications through the utilization of storyboards?
Do teams of all sizes use storyboarding as a way to visualize their barriers, goals, problems, solutions, and project plans?
Do you promote the use of storyboarding in meetings involving sensitive topics?
Do you offer assistance in storyboard facilitation to teams in need?
Do all employees know how to conduct a storyboarding session and in which situations this technique is particularly useful?
Do you invite your customers and suppliers to participate in storyboarding sessions to gain their feedback and assistance in planning and problem solving?
Actions to Take
Train all employees in the technique of storyboarding.
Provide teams with areas to storyboard and the flexibility to leave them visible for as long as needed.
Use storyboarding in planning sessions to develop timelines and project assignments; use the storyboard as a dynamic tool which can be changed, revised, and updated as needed.
Use storyboarding to gain anonymous input from all meeting participants, particularly when there are sensitive topics at hand.
Use storyboarding to gain feedback from customer groups.
Develop a formal communication plan that defines who, what, when, and how communications are made to all employees. Schedule storyboard sessions with all employees to gather ideas for improvement.
Storyboarding was used throughout the two-year life of the Whirlpool Global No-Frost team. Everyone participated. We kept cards and markers on hand, and we would hand them out whenever scheduling or other questions arose. The cards were particularly effective with cross-functional teams as people’s different functions seemed to encourage participation. According to Jerry, “A bunch of engineers in a room will produce few cards, but when they are joined by manufacturing, purchasing, and marketing, diverse points of view come up on the boards, and discussion can become extremely lively, heated, and finally productive.”
Storyboarding, Jerry found, was a valuable way to get ideas and reactions out of team members. If a deadline was under discussion, he didn’t want the team members sitting back and saying silently to themselves, “This will never be.” He told them he wanted everybody’s opinions on the cards because only when the barriers are spelled out is it possible to overcome them. “They don’t want to stand up and talk about their doubts, so storyboarding is a way for people to get their thoughts on cards anonymously. It’s a tremendously helpful technique for seeing a way of eliminating barriers.” It was also a way for the team to reach a consensus and to figure out exactly where each subteam stood within the overall schedule.
Our Featured Organization:
John Robert’s Spa
A NEW STYLE OF VISUALIZATION
The Disney organization performs a balancing act in three areas: a quality cast experience; a quality guest experience, and a quality business experience. As an avid implementer of Disney’s method, John DiJulius, cofounder of John Robert’s, credits the storyboard process for helping his team achieve that balance. “We have weekly meetings on Tuesday mornings where our managers storyboard,” said John. “We actually stopped doing this at one point and said ‘Let’s go to a monthly meeting,’ but we found out that was a bad experience.”70
Every year, John Robert’s uses storyboarding to identify 24 items that are critical to the organization’s overall success. Once a month, the entire staff meets to discuss and reinforce these strategic initiatives.
Taking storyboarding to the next level, John teaches all new employees how to use visualization to help accomplish long-term goals. His Dream Retreats have evolved into a training ground for what he terms “the picturization process.” As John described them, “They require a lot of homework. Employees must come to the process with their goals, pictures of their dreams, even their eulogy.” The Dream Retreat affords people an opportunity to learn how to see the value of visualizing and setting personal goals through activities such as producing a scrapbook of self-promotions. They band together in “Dream teams” and vow to hold each other accountable for achieving their goals. The grand finale is an awards dinner where everyone is required to dress according to how they envision themselves in five years. Some rent costumes, some wear Tommy Bahama shirts with a tie; whatever their “character,” they must remain true to their role during the event. On the previous day, John calls employees to find out which “roles” they have chosen. He gives each employee an award based on their personas. Awards may be “father of the year,” “new entrepreneur of the year,” “best-selling author,” and so on. John told us, “Each employee must make a detailed five-minute acceptance speech on how they accomplished their Dream.”
As John Robert’s discovered, the storyboarding process serves as a springboard for unleashing creative energies, and ultimately contributes to achieving positive results for employees, customers and business alike.
USING STORYBOARDS TO CAPTURE CUSTOMER FEEDBACK
Many of our clients are unable or unwilling to spend thousands of dollars on professional marketing studies to find out just what customers are thinking and what they really want. In our Dream Retreats and “Creating the Magic with Dream, Believe, Dare, Do” seminars, we teach a relatively simple variation of storyboarding to accomplish this goal within structured groups.
Here are the steps for obtaining customer feedback:
1. Invite a group of 15 to 20 customers whom you believe have a vested interest in helping you improve one or more of your products or services. Plan to provide refreshments, a light meal, or a gift certificate to compensate for their time. We have found that most people, especially loyal customers, welcome an opportunity to provide feedback in areas that directly affect them.
2. Present a brief overview of the mechanics of storyboarding. Distribute the supplies to the group: 4 × 6 index cards, blue (or black) and red water-soluble felt-tip markers, three-quarter-inch blue and red removable dots, masking and drafting tape for creating the “board.” (Use masking tape to anchor the top and bottom of 4-foot tape strips that are placed sticky-side out in rows of 12 to 14 per board.)
3. Ask the group to storyboard, answering the question: “What elements create your ideal customer experience in the area of _____(fill in your product or service)?” For example, if you are in the hotel business, you might ask your customers, “What elements create your ideal hotel experience?” Explain to them that this step is to really identify what the ultimate experience should “look like.” Write the question you have asked on a 4 × 6 index card. This is the “Topic Card.”
4. Once you have collected, read aloud, and posted all the Detail (response) and Header cards (Figure. 10-1), distribute three “red dots” to each participant and ask them to place their dots on the three cards that they consider to be most important.
5. Distribute three “green dots” to each participant and ask them to place their dots on the three cards that they believe are your strengths, or things you are doing well
6. Distribute three “blue dots” to each participant and ask them to place their dots on the three cards that they believe are your weaknesses, or things you could improve.
In a 60 to 90 minute session, the storyboard will be complete and you’ll have a snapshot of what really matters to your customers and how you measure up to their criteria of an “ideal” experience with your organization. Figure 10-2 is an actual example of a customer feedback storyboard from one of our clients, a residential healthcare facility.71
It is not uncommon to discover that some of the things that customers believe you are doing well are unimportant to them. If you discover an obvious conflict between what you think is important and what the customer thinks is important, consider this a serious red flag. If you don’t change direction, your organization might be spiraling toward disaster. In Figure 10-2, you will notice that the residents considered the library and access to social workers as the two best attributes of their healthcare facility. However, not one of the residents felt these two items were important.
Figure 10-2. Customer feedback storyboard
We recommend storyboarding with three or four different customer groups and then comparing the results. If you want to take this process a step farther, ask the same question to a random group of front-line service providers and to the top management group. It may surprise you which group really has a better understanding of the customers’ needs, desires, and dreams.